


The New Adventures of Old Dryl

by Dubs_Rewatcher



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Comedy, Comedy of Errors, Entrapta was a terrible princess, Gen, Goblins, Men can be princesses, There's a metaphor in here somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 06:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19245658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dubs_Rewatcher/pseuds/Dubs_Rewatcher
Summary: Dryl has always been a terrible kingdom. Things haven't gotten much better since Entrapta went on a mission to the Fright Zone and got herself killed.Luckily, Entrapta's kitchen staff is here to lead Dryl into the future — if they can figure out what it means to be a princess in the first place.Silver Medal-winning entry in the Writeoff Association's May contest, "Why Can't You See Me?"





	The New Adventures of Old Dryl

Dryl was a terrible kingdom. Few exports, no army, barely any land, horrible weather, high mortality rates, a crippling amount of debt, and a national anthem that sounded like a tone deaf raccoon playing with scrap metal. And considering that one month ago, Princess Entrapta left without telling anyone and got herself killed, the future didn’t look too bright.  
  
But if those weeks spent in anarchy had accomplished anything, it was giving Nolfi some time to herself. She’d spent most of her life as Entrapta’s personal waitress. Never went on vacation. Even when the robots came in and took over most of her shifts, she still ran around the kitchen, helping the others however she could.  
  
But now, without anyone to serve, all she could do was sit in the corner and think.  
  
Her friends grieved in other ways. Crema, the head baker, poured herself into her work, filling the halls with tons of tiny food—with no princess to eat it, it just went stale. And Mitch, the soda brewer, had become addicted to his product, cradling a bottle against his chest as he rocked himself to sleep every night.   
  
Nolfi could only watch. And think. And eat however much she liked.  
  
It took a long while for Nolfi to put the words together, but one day while her friends worked, she lifted her head and asked, “Should we be doing something?”  
  
Crema didn’t look up from her mixing bowl. “What do you mean? We are doing something: making dinner! Again.”  
  
“That’s right,” Mitch said. He filled up a fresh bottle of soda and immediately downed it.  
  
“No, I mean, about Dryl.” Nolfi shrugged. “It’s been a month. Shouldn’t we have, like, a new princess by now?”  
  
“New princesses don’t grow on trees, kiddo,” said Crema, hands on hips. “This isn’t Plumeria.”  
  
“Yeah, but there’s gotta be somebody around who’s right for the job,” Nolfi said.  
  
Mitch snorted. “Like who? A robot? One of the goblins?”  
  
“I think they prefer ‘tunnel dwellers,’” Crema said.  
  
Nolfi twiddled her thumbs. “I mean... it could be one of us.”  
  
The trio paused.  
  
“We do know more about the kingdom better than anyone,” Crema said, scratching her chin.  
  
“And we do know the layout of the castle,” said Nolfi. “Mostly.”  
  
Mitch nodded. “And we are quite cute.”  
  
Crema shook her head. “But wait, wait! This is crazy! We don’t know anything about how to rule a kingdom!”  
  
“Neither did Entrapta,” Nolfi said.  
  
Crema closed her mouth, blinked a bit, then nodded. “Good point. I’m in.”  
  
Nolfi went back to staring at her feet. “So... which one of us should be the Princess?”  
  
Mitch threw back another soda and leaned against the wall all cool-like. “Why, me, of course! I’m the oldest and the wisest.”  
  
“What are you on about?” Crema scowled. “You, wiser than me, the greatest baker this side of Etheria? That’s a joke. And besides, you can’t be a princess—you’re a man!”  
  
“Men can be princesses,” Mitch said, turning up his nose. “But I wouldn’t expect a... not-wise person like you to understand that.”  
  
“Why can’t I be the Princess?” Nolfi asked, jumping to her feet. “You’re all old. You’ll die way before me, and then we have to go through all this again.”  
  
The three spent the next hour bickering—a month of staying in a dark room doing nothing had pretty much destroyed their understanding of time – before Crema groaned, grabbed the two hard by the shoulders and said, “Why don’t all three of us just rule as co-Princess?”  
  
“Good idea!” chirped Nolfi. She wrapped Crema in a hug. “I always knew you were the wisest.”  
  
Mitch pouted.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
For their first official act as Princess, the trio wrote a long royal decree, declaring that Dryl was under new management. As to keep the balance of power equal, they wrote the letter together—literally together, each of them keeping a hand on a single pen. It all came out a bit messy. And Crema and Nolfi were right handed while Mitch wrote with his left, which didn’t help.  
  
But by the end, they’d crafted an almost entirely legible proclamation. Almost. With heads raised high, they taped the scroll to a robot pigeon’s leg and sent it off to Brightmoon. Surely the Princess Rebellion would be ecstatic when they heard about Entrapta’s replacement.  
  
But they weren’t truly the Princess yet. Even Entrapta, as young as she was, had a crown. A lot of them, actually. Entrapta saw her royal crown as just another gadget to be improved upon, and spent days at a time adding new features to it, only to get bored, throw it down the garbage chute, and make a new one.   
  
So if the three of them wanted a crown, they knew just where to go.  
  
  
  
  
Most visitors to Dryl, of which there were none, wondered how it could be called a kingdom with no citizens. The truth was that Dryl had loads of citizens, but most of them were dirty, putrid, smelly goblins who lived underground, at the end of the garbage chute, and weren’t allowed to come outside.  
  
Holding hands and trembling, the three pushed their way through the streets of the goblin city—Uglyville, it might have been called?—trying to ignore how everyone glared at them. What had they ever done or said to make these subhuman beasts so upset?  
  
Maybe, Nolfi figured, the goblins were just upset at how awful the city they’d built for themselves was. Just consider at the sort of buildings that lined their streets: banks, libraries, schools, hospitals, aromatherapist offices. Even a public park—what kind of town had one of those? Where were their mindless robots? Or their endless maze filled with dog pictures? What a weird place.  
  
“This place gives me the creeps,” Nolfi whispered to her companions. She recoiled as a goblin carrying a suitcase scurried between her legs. “Can’t we just make our own crown? We’ve got loads of dough back in the kitchen.”  
  
“Hush up!” Crema said, elbowing her. “Too loud, and the little monsters might gnaw your ankles off.”  
  
Nolfi gasped and jumped into Mitch’s arms.  
  
A few paces away, two goblins harrumphed, adjusted their gold-framed monocles, and took off on their tandem bicycle.  
  
It took a few minutes of wandering before the trio found their destination. The garbage chute led from Entrapta’s lab to a massive building in the middle of Uglyville. A sign on the front of the store read, “Supermarket.”  
  
Crema placed a firm hand on each of her comrades’ backs. “Stay strong, friends. Who knows what kind of freakshow they’ve got going on in here.”  
  
Heads down, they scurried inside—and at once, froze at what they saw.  
  
Food.  
  
So much food! Fruit, vegetables, sweets, juice, even soda! Colorful plastic packaging, lining the walls from floor to ceiling! The smell of freshly baked bread, wafting through the air, turning the legs to jelly!  
  
“Wait,” Nolfi said. “Goblins can eat?”  
  
Crema snorted. “ _I’ve_  never seen it.”  
  
Mitch sprinted over to the soda shelf and started shoving bottles down his shirt.  
  
As the resident goblin shoppers whispered and stared and pointed, Nolfi scanned the store with squinted eyes. “Look! Over there!” she said, pointing at a rack of shelves on the other side of the store. Crema and Nolfi grabbed Mitch and dragged him over.  
  
A sign reading “CLEARANCE” in big red letters hung above the shelves, which were lined with all of Entrapta’s crowns—alongside a smashed bottle of ketchup and a She-Ra doll missing a leg.  
  
“Ooh!” Nolfi picked up a plain gray crown and placed it upon her head. “I’m feeling more regal already!”  
  
“This one has some fancy lights attached to it,” said Crema, her head glowing.  
  
“And this one’s got a cupholder!” Mitch said, placing a bottle of soda inside.  
  
“So! We’re finally deemed worthy to receive a visit from the Princess’ puppets.”  
  
Nofli shrieked and jumped behind Crema. Behind them stood a goblin in a top hat and suit coat, with a long sash around her torso that read “Mayor.” In her stubby arms, she held a basket with bread and eggs.  
  
Her frown looked practiced. “We haven’t seen your kind down here in quite a while.”  
  
Mitch shrugged. “Well, you are pretty gross.”  
  
The mayor’s frown only deepened. “Right. Princess Entrapta couldn’t even bother to make the trip herself, eh?”  
  
“Of course not,” Crema said, chuckling. “She’s dead.”  
  
The entire store stopped—whispers and murmurs grew—then the entire building broke out into a unified cheer. Mothers wept as they held their children. Customers ran into the streets, whooping and hollering.  
  
The Mayor’s frown had grown into a wide grin. “Oh, well, that’s... that’s such awful news! I take it that means we’re free from the rule of any princess now, eh?”  
  
“Not quite.” Nolfi puffed out her chest. “We’re the Princess now.”  
  
“I see.” Holding her hat in her hands, the Mayor sidled up to the trio and smiled. “I don’t suppose there’s any talk of finally giving us goblinfolk some representation? We’ve got some... concerns about the way we’ve been treated all these years.”  
  
The trio had already walked away. “Sure, sure,” Mitch said, waving away the Mayor’s words. “Once we figure out this ‘becoming a princess’ thing first.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
After five hours of sitting in Entrapta’s throne—an office chair with one of the armrests missing—each wearing their own crown, the trio was starting to think that maybe they weren’t cut out to be Princess. They felt exactly the same as they had without the crowns, only with more aches and pains from all sitting in the same chair. What had they done wrong?  
  
“Maybe we need to rediscover what ruling Dryl is all about,” Crema finally said, wrenching herself free from the chair.  
  
“Friendship?” Nofli tried.  
  
“Absolute monarchy?” Mitch added.  
  
“No!” Crema said, hands on hips. “I just meant, why don’t we check out Dryl’s constitution? All these kingdoms have one of those, right?”  
  
“Oh, definitely,” said Nolfi, nodding and not knowing at all what Crema was talking about. “But where is it?”  
  
  
  
  
“This store has everything!” Nolfi said, plucking a CD-rom from the clearance rack. Its jewel case was cracked, and it had a piece of duct tape slapped on it that read “Dryl Constitution” in black marker.  
  
“Back again?” the Mayor asked, sauntering up to the trio.  
  
Mitch cast her a raised eyebrow glance. “You sure do spend a lot of time at the market.”  
  
“I forgot the milk,” the Mayor said, blushing. “In any case, have you solved your dilemma? Are you back to give us the rights and civil liberties we so truly deserve? We’d love to come above ground occasionally, and—”  
  
The trio had already run out.  
  
  
  
  
Back in Entrapta’s lab, they inserted the CD into Entrapta’s computer and let it load. It popped up on the massive screen with a ping, and the three began to read:  
  


> Dryl is a kingdom.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][68.5]

  
  
And on and on like that it went, with enough footnotes to fill up the screen. Crema pressed a button to skip to the end of the footnotes. The computer made a sharp electronic screeching sound, and then crashed.  
  
The three spent a moment sitting together in the dark, considering the life choices that had brought them here.  
  
Crema turned to her companions. “What were the ideas you two had for what ruling Dryl was all about?”  
  
Nolfi’s eyes sparkled. “Friendship?”  
  
“No, no, the other one.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Stood on top of a toppled statue that looked suspiciously like Entrapta, Mitch called out to the citizens of Uglyville: “Hear ye, hear ye! Your new Princess has an announcement!”  
  
The goblins stopped their parade floats and snuffed out their fireworks. Grumbling and mumbling, they gathered in a crowd before the trio.  
  
Nolfi, Crema, and Mitch, each decked out in their own crowns, stood high and mighty above the Uglyville residents. “As your Princess,” Nolfi said, “we hereby declare absolute authority over you all!”  
  
“And for our first decree, we say that you will have tiny food for every meal!” Crema said.  
  
Mitch nodded. “And fizzy beverages for every drink!”  
  
“And no representation for any of you!” Nolfi shouted, throwing up her hands.  
  
“Welcome to New Dryl!” they announced together.  
  
The goblins stayed silent. Then they marched.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Two weeks later, in a Horde tank out on the road that led to Dryl, Entrapta jumped to her feet and pointed at the front gate. “Look!” she chirped to Catra and Scorpia. “I told you I knew where Dryl was!”  
  
Catra grabbed Entrapta by her collar and held her in the air. “We’ve been wandering around this mountain range for a week! We ran out of food two days ago!”  
  
Entrapta, still smiling, just blinked. “Well, sure. But it was a nice drive.”  
  
Scorpia, looking quite gaunt, chuckled. “Don’t worry about her. When Catra gets hungry, she can get a bit... catty.”  
  
Catra spun around. “Say one more word, and I will tie your tail to your tongue.”  
  
Scorpia threw a claw to her mouth, until Catra turned around, when she whispered, “That’d give a new meaning to ‘the cat’s got your tongue—’”  
  
“I  _swear_  to  _Hordak—_ ”  
  
Parking a few yards away from Dryl’s front gate, Entrapta jumped out of the tank. “Last one to the door is a corrupted hard drive!”  
  
Catra and Scorpia got out and followed after. They watched as Entrapta entered a code to open the front gate, and walked inside.  
  
What they found stunned them. Chrome buildings, reaching up to the sky. Flying cars, speeding through the air. Laughing goblin children, looking as healthy as could be. A true utopia, untouched by the poisons of monarchy and capitalism.  
  
“This is Dryl?” Catra asked. “I thought you guys were, like, poor.”  
  
“Wow,” Entrapta said, marveling at it all. She clapped her hands together. “I must have been a way better princess than I remembered!”  
  
A few goblins in armor, holding spears, approached them.  
  
“Oh, hello!” Entrapta said, waving. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you filthy goblins. How have you been?”  
  
From the shadows, about a dozen more armored goblins appeared. They quickly ambushed, overpowered, and neutralized the Horde invaders.  
  
Catra, Entrapta, and Scorpia were taken underground and thrown into a jail cell — alongside Nolfi, Crema, and Mitch. When the door closed, all of them were bathed in darkness.  
  
Catra sighed. “Entrapta?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Your kingdom sucks.”  
  
“I know!” Entrapta squealed. “Isn’t it great?”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“I can’t read any of this,” Glimmer said, shaking her head.  
  
Adora and Glimmer stood over the letter they’d received from a robot pigeon. It just looked like a bunch of scribbles.  
  
Glimmer frowned. “Is it First Ones writing?”  
  
“Not any that I can read,” said Adora. She picked up the letter and turned it sideways, upside-down. “Nah, I got nothing.”  
  
“Hm.” Glimmer tapped her chin. “So, what should we do with it?”  
  
They exchanged a glance.  
  
Adora crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. “Eh.”


End file.
